Posted
by
Soulskillon Sunday June 10, 2012 @08:20AM
from the skynet-will-forget-both dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "PC Magazine reports that journalist Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Outliers, has stirred up quite a controversy in tech circles with his off-the-cuff remarks that history will remember Bill Gates fondly while Steve Jobs slips into obscurity. Gladwell likened Gates' charitable work to the German armaments maker Oskar Schindler's famous efforts to save his Jewish workers from the gas chambers during World War II, and added that because of Gates there's a reasonable shot we will cure malaria. 'Gates, sure, is the most ruthless capitalist. And then he decides, he wakes up one morning and he says, "Enough." And he steps down, he takes his money, takes it off the table ... and I think, I firmly believe that 50 years from now, he will be remembered for his charitable work,' said Gladwell. 'And of the great entrepreneurs of this era, people will have forgotten Steve Jobs. Who's Steve Jobs again?' For all his dismissal of Jobs' legacy, however, Gladwell remains utterly fascinated with him. 'He was an extraordinarily brilliant businessman and entrepreneur. He was also a self-promoter on a level that we have rarely seen,' said Gladwell. 'What was brilliant about Apple, he understood from the get-go that the key to success in that marketplace was creating a distinctive and powerful and seductive brand.' Gladwell concludes that the most extraordinary moment in the biography of Jobs is when Jobs is on his deathbed and it's over and he knows it. 'And on, I forget, three, four occasions, he refuses the mask because he is unhappy with its design. That's who he was. Right to the very end, he had a set of standards. If he was going to die, dammit, he's going to die with the right kind of oxygen mask. To him it was like making him send his final emails using Windows.'"

The problem is twofold. First of all, sending an email using Windows is actually better than using a Mac, which treats email like some archaic throwback to the dark ages. The second is that Jobs hatred of Windows was as much a blessing as it was a curse. There was nothing wrong with giving people a decent car to drive. So what if it is not god's gift to mankind. It is amazing that Steve did what he did but it was driven by his perception of what is better. Ultimately both were businessmen who did well. One left to focus on something else. Both will be dead. Both will be remembered. And it's unlikely that either will fade.

The article is right, though... 50 years from now, Steve Jobs' chief contribution will have been the creation of a design company that hasn't actually come up with a new idea since a couple of years before Jobs' death. I would be surprised if Apple is still in existence in 50 years. Jobs will end up as a footnote in history. I would be equally surprised if Microsoft is still in existence in 50 years, but they do have a better chance because they're ruled by committee. How many people remember what Douglas Engelbart did for computing? This place is populated by geeks, and I'd lay odds that several people reading this don't know what he did, even though modern computers couldn't work the way they do without his contributions. 50 years from now, Jobs will be in the same category.

Here's the thing... the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is set up as a self-perpetuating trust. They are spending gobs of cash, but they're only spending the interest and are actually profitable despite the amount of money they're spending on charity work. Barring some kind of global economic meltdown orders of magnitude worse than the one in 2008, 50 years from now the Gates Foundation will still be around, and will still be doing charitable work. For that reason alone, Bill Gates will be better remembered by history.

Exactly the person I was going to compare Gates to. Gates made his billions and then turned philanthropist, just like Rockefeller. And similarly, he'll be remembered by some for doing so. His name isn't going away anytime soon, but it'll be an indistinct name that's generally well-regarded, though no one is sure why. The generations 100 years from now will remember him as someone who did something good with his money, though they'd be hard-pressed to say precisely what, just as most of us are likely hard-pressed to think of what specifically Rockefeller did for his philanthropy. I seriously doubt that he'll be remembered for curing malaria in the same sort of way that we think of Salk with polio.

In contrast, I see Jobs being remembered for "his" inventions, in much the same way that Edison is credited for inventing a number of things that he actually just refined or made commercially viable. Jobs' name is the one that will receive credit in the history books for commercializing personal, tablet, and pocket computers thanks to the Mac, iPad, and iPhone, even though he wasn't alone on them and wasn't even the first to market for them. I doubt very much that his name will carry the same clout in 100+ years that Edison's name carries, but if tablet and mobile computing becomes more ubiquitous, I believe that his name is the one that will receive the credit for those.

I would also hope that Jobs (and Jony Ive) would be remembered for reemphasizing and demonstrating the importance of design in products, but given that the world has largely already forgotten great designers from the past century, such as Dieter Rams, I doubt that he'll be remembered for that at all. Similarly, I expect that Apple will stray from that idea in the coming decades, in much the same way that Sony strayed from what made them great just a few decades ago.

"They abused their position as an OS vendor by tweaking products to be less interoperable with their competitors' software. They abused their thus-gained monopoly position through all manner of anticompetitive practice. This resulted not only in a dearth of customer choice (necessary for a healthy marketplace) but also in actual negative financial impact to human beings."

I'm talking about Microsoft, but give Apple time and success and you'll likely be able to reuse the quotation and apply it to them. Apple does not and never has had a monopoly, not even on apps for iDevices, although I do think their attempts at lockdown are anticompetitive.

Their attempts have been extremely successful. They've learnt a really Hollywood lesson, "if you're cool enough, you can get away with anything". As someone who buys iPods but will never buy a Mac, I'm stuck between horrified fascination and geeky indignation. They're so cool they have the tech media fantasizing about how cool their new Mac Pros will be, and what they might look like, whereas if HP or Lenovo had taken years to release a new workstation refresh they'd just get endless complaints. Amazing, yet horrifying.

"""You can't make a car analogy here, because it would be retarded. The problem with Apple has always been that Apple abused their position. They abused their position as an hardware and OS vendor by tweaking products to be less inter-operable with their competitors' software. They abused their thus-gained monopoly position through all manner of anti-competitive practice. This resulted not only in a dearth of customer choice (necessary for a healthy marketplace) but also in actual negative financial impact

Yes, you went off on an anti-Apple rant that is irrelevant to the statement I made. If you want me to agree that Apple also sucks, I will readily do so. If you want me to agree that the only reason they don't suck as much as Microsoft is that they are less successful, I can probably agree with that, too. If you want me to agree that Apple has done as much harm as Microsoft, you're going to be a long fucking time ranting.

Maybe you weren't around in the 1980s. Everything was proprietary and super expensive. MS broke this by licensing MS-DOS to Compaq over IBM's objections. This triggered an avalanche of new companies like Dell and competition between hardware OEMs which drove down prices and made PCs affordable by giving users hardware choice Even Linux started out on x86 compatible chips.

From Compaq's WIki entry:

In November 1982 Compaq announced their first product, the Compaq Portable, a portable IBM PC compatible personal computer. It was released in March 1983 at $2995, considerably more affordable than the Canadian Hyperion. The Compaq Portable was one of the progenitors of today's laptop; some called it a "suitcase computer" for its size and the look of its case. It was the second IBM PC compatible, being capable of running all software that would run on an IBM PC. It was a commercial success, selling 53,000 units in its first year and generating $111 million in sales revenue. The Compaq Portable was the first in the range of the Compaq Portable series. Compaq was able to market a legal IBM clone because IBM mostly used "off the shelf" parts for their PC. Furthermore, Microsoft had kept the right to license the operating system to other computer manufacturers. The only part which had to be duplicated was the BIOS, which Compaq did legally by using clean room reverse engineering at a cost of $1 million.[12][13][14] Phoenix Technologies would shortly follow their lead, but soon "clone BIOSes" were available from many other companies who reverse engineered IBM's design, then sold their version to the PC clone manufacturers.

What about Dell then?

Dell traces its origins to 1984, when Michael Dell created PCs Limited while a student at the University of Texas at Austin. The dorm-room headquartered company sold IBM PC-compatible computers built from stock components.[7] Dell dropped out of school in order to focus full-time on his fledgling business, after getting about $300,000 in expansion-capital from his family.

In 1985, the company produced the first computer of its own design, the "Turbo PC", which sold for US$795.[8] PCs Limited advertised its systems in national computer magazines for sale directly to consumers and custom assembled each ordered unit according to a selection of options. The company grossed more than $73 million in its first year of operation.

The company changed its name to "Dell Computer Corporation" in 1988 and began expanding globally. In June 1988, Dell's market capitalization grew by $30 million to $80 million from its June 22 initial public offering of 3.5 million shares at $8.50 a share.[9] In 1992, Fortune magazine included Dell Computer Corporation in its list of the world's 500 largest companies, making Michael Dell the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company ever.[10]

Would these companies have succeeded if Microsoft did not license MS-DOS to them? Remember that all we had then were super expensive proprietary hardware, and driving down the costs led to the PC revolution(and then the internet revolution) across the world. Why did Linus start Linux on a x86 and not an Apple? Even Apple switched to x86 hardware in 2005 to drive down costs. Also, having one platform to develop for reduced costs for developers, instead of having of spend a lot of effort to support multiple competing platforms, monoculture has it's advantages and a lot of drawbacks too.

Bill Gates' vision was a computer on every desk, at work and at home(unlike IBM's) and he succeeded. And once he succeeded immensely, instead of turning into another Scrooge Mcduck, he left everything, including the company he founded to work full time helping and visiting the worst off people in the world who can't even afford a phone, forget about a PC and spending tens of billions of dollars on preventing and curing AIDS. It sickens me to see people attacking him for it in various ways, based on their extreme biases like about Netscape self destructi

I was just discussing this on G+ where it was claimed that Billy boy has wiped out Polio in the third world. To which I said, Uh, No.

Bill Gates has temporarily suppressed Polio in certain parts of the third world and helped sell it out in the process. In order to get vaccinations you have to provide strong IP protection to Big Pharma. So strong that if your people are dying and you make the medication to save them instead of buying it because you can't afford it that the WTO will end up owning your asshole. Meanwhile, they're not going to get into every nation, which is what it actually takes to eradicate a disease. Instead they are lending a false sense of security while creating a ticking time bomb.

Meanwhile, the foundation makes for-profit investments in industries literally killing the people they are vaccinating. When caught in this they first announced that they would review their investments for ethics; the next day they took down that press release and put up another one saying that they would not be reviewing their investments' ethical nature because it would be difficult and expensive.

The Gates Foundation is not and never has been about improving the world. The money that went into its foundation belongs, by rights, to the American people, because Microsoft was found to have illegally abused its monopoly position by the USDoJ, which had a profound effect on essentially every player in the computing industry. However, Bush's dog Ashcroft announced that there would be zero repercussions, and the Gates foundation was founded, and now does the work of Big Pharma and the WTO.

And of course, let us not forget that Gates is personally, massively invested in pharma; the operation of a nonprofit which was created with illicitly-gained money and which exists to spread the laws desired by Big Pharma is therefore a clear conflict of interest. You may start with the LA Times article "Dark Cloud over Good Works of Gates Foundation" and perform your research from there. Bill Gates has never done anything for the benefit of mankind. If you fell for the Gates Foundation, you need a course in critical thinking in the worst way.

Anyone who believes that Bill Gates is trying to save the world probably also believed that Larry Ellison just wanted to reduce crime in the USA when he was backing that unified national ID program, too.ï

(quick comment since I was JUST talking about this and just had to do a bit of edit and reformat, not an appropriated copypasta.)

^This.Unfortunately, history is written by the winners, and dead people don't win. Plus these days, history is written by the rich.I have to wonder about Gladwell. He started out writing interesting science articles, descended into cherry-picking data to support odd claims, and now this? If it weren't for Jobs, we'd still be running our PCs off the DOS control line (or maybe IBM OS-2.x).

I agree about Gladwell. The way he talked about Jobs not having original ideas showed that he really has no clue about how the technology industry works. The smugness that went along with this was fairly insufferable.

I didn't have a particularly positive impression of Gladwell to begin with – but it's even lower now.

I was just discussing this on G+ where it was claimed that Billy boy has wiped out Polio in the third world. To which I said, Uh, No.

Bill Gates has temporarily suppressed Polio in certain parts of the third world and helped sell it out in the process. In order to get vaccinations you have to provide strong IP protection to Big Pharma. So strong that if your people are dying and you make the medication to save them instead of buying it because you can't afford it that the WTO will end up owning your asshole. Meanwhile, they're not going to get into every nation, which is what it actually takes to eradicate a disease. Instead they are lending a false sense of security while creating a ticking time bomb.

The drive to eradicate polio around the world is sponsored by the WTO, the CDC and Rotary International (oops, I just checked and now Unicef has been added). The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is a big donor, contributing at least $1 billion, but they do not call the shots. Further, polio vaccines are not protected by IP laws, you might want to google Salk and Sabin, or even just visit the polio eradication web site. [polioeradication.org] How you got so misinformed I have no idea, but you really should at least conduct a simple fact search on the internet before putting your online name against such poppycock.

Seriously? You're really going to ask that question? You don't actually want the answer, do you? AIDS drugs are expensive largely because of patents, and 30 children die every hour because of AIDS-related complications. That's one illness.

Strong IP protection for big pharma is currently extremely necessary.

[citation needed]

Drug development isn't cheap.

The vast majority of Big Pharma's expenditure is on advertising. Much of the funding to create their drugs actually comes from the taxpayer, because the fundamental research is carried out at public universities.

Now if we were in an ideal world where all drug development was funded generously by tax and not private enterprise i'd agree that patents would be counter productive

Great. Let's do that. There's no reason we can't do that; the fundamental research is already done at universities. Now the trials will have to be done by the universities instead of private firms that find it much easier to hide inconvenient results.

I wish they'd start by making all drug advertising illegal then maybe they'd have a bit more money to work with.

The vast majority of Big Pharma's expenditure is on advertising. Much of the funding to create their drugs actually comes from the taxpayer, because the fundamental research is carried out at public universities.

Going from fundamental research, which usually identifies a target, designing tens of thousands of candidate drugs, weeding out the 99% which doesn't work, and the 99% of the rest that is unacceptable in humans, doing phase 1, 2 and 3 human trials on the remaining 10 is not cheap. While I agree that the way it is done today is not ideal, there is no guarantee that another specific way will be better, and making the change to another way is going to be complicated. I still think we should do it, though.

Don't speak too soon; the score has been bouncing up and down. The negative moderation varies between "troll" (which means saying something you don't believe; anyone familiar with my posting history knows I've been playing this harp since 2007!) and "overrated", which of course means "anything I don't agree with derp derp". If it deserves a lower score, it deserves that score for a reason, but the Overrated mod does not provide one — and it should probably be reserved for editors. Or if we should ever

In the same way that everyone remember Columbus, but no one remembers his financial supporters, I don't think Gates will be remembered for curing malaria or whatever else he gives money too.Leading a successful company just isn't interesting enough for you to be remembered for hundreds of years.

Not in the DRC. A friend of mine is a producer for National Geographic, and they've just finished filming a documentary there. Those mosquito nets that Gates is paying to have distributed? Most people use them...as nets to catch fish. This is one of the big problems with non-profit groups. They often seem to be more focused on how hard they are trying than about how effective their actions really are.

Congo is, of course, a complete mess. You're taking the worst, most difficult example and trying to extrapolate from there. The situation would be far better in Zambia, Rwanda, Uganda or other surrounding countries. Even in the Congo, I doubt that the numbers are that over 50% of the mosquito nets are used for fishing as you claim.

People do study the effectiveness of different approaches. It doesn't take a genius level intelligence to go through a year later and check that there were fewer reported case

He's right - Gates probably will be remembered fondly in time. Gates is using his vast fortune to do a lot of good things now and it will make an already-memorable man more so.

He is, however, entirely wrong that Jobs will be forgotten. Jobs is, simply put, the most successful CEO in history. I don't think that can even vaguely be debated (at least not intelligently). Some could even argue that his success as a CEO makes him also the most successful _leader_ of all time. Of course, some will argue against that theory. Regardless of your thoughts on it, however, you will be discussing him and thus he will not be forgotten, at least not for many, many generations.

And, no, I didn't read the article - I refuse to read any article that so obviously utilizes inane controversy to generate page views and bump of ad revenue.

You're seriously trying to claim that Jobs hasn't revolutionized entire industries? Seriously? You might want to look into what he's accomplished and how entire industries have been shaped by his work. And I say "industries", in the plural, intentionally.

I read Gladwell's book Outliers a few months back. I thought he made some reasonable, if somewhat obvious points, until he went completely off the rails when he discussed differences in math schooling between China and the US.

In short, he said that the way chinese count gives them an edge in learning calculus, because the chinese say the number 13 as "three and ten", building the number out of simpler, more fundamental numbers, whereas in the US children must learn an entirely new word: "thirteen". He ignored how studying calculus concepts like differentials and integrals at a young age (I think around junior high age) is the norm in China, whereas in the US, students only get a watered-down "pre-calc" in their senior year of high school unless they're really ambitious and they take AP classes in their later teens.

There's an excellent review of Outliers that was published in The New Republic available here [powells.com], for those with a lugubrious interest in learning precisely why we should ignore Gladwell.

Look at some of the guys history remembers. Thomas Edison? Henry Ford? We don't remember Henry Ford because of the Ford Foundation either. Gladwell seems to think the historical fame of entrepreneurs is based mainly on their charity. Why? Jobs will be remembered not just because he guided Apple to be the most capitalized company ever, but because he was a "character" while doing so. The black sweater and tennis shoes, the hippie past, the dickish behavior behind closed doors, the fact that he was fired then brought back, etc.

But say what you want about Microsoft or Bill Gates, but he sure has helped the world with the fortune he created during his lifetime. He sure is a great person for that reason, and kudos to Bill for that.

He's realised he needs to take care of his public image if he wants to die a well liked man but that doesn't mean he's some awesome full-time charity hero. Yes, he's the co-chairman of his foundation but likewise he's still the chairman of Microsoft which happens to use the same questionable labour as Apple through Foxconn. Where's his caring for those people? It's probably because his primary job is still making money off of people. He's the CEO of Cascade Investment so my guess his primary concern is still making money not helping people.

But even if you focus on just his charity, it's arguably a very damaging charity. He's using his wealth to basically create another monopoly but this one's in the charitable sector rather than computers. The end result is all the talent and skill gets dumped into things he wants to fix and other areas suffer. There have already been numerous complaints about this.

His charity only gives away minimal amount of money to basically avoid taxes while investing the rest and they invest in companies that won't work with poor countries so they can buy needed drugs and oil companies that are destroying the same countries he claims to want to help. People in the niger delta have loads of vision issues, asthma and bronchitis because of the companies he invests in. How is curing measles for these people helping them? They get to die from something else which is probably worse? What a great guy. Oh and when he gets that malaria disease will poor countries even be able to get it or will it retain a high price and basically only help Gate's rich buddies?

I suggest more people need to take a critical look at his foundation. The information is out there and has been reported on like in the L.A> Times http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,2533850.story [latimes.com] but for the most part he gets a pass because it's charity work and they think they can cure AIDS. But that doesn't excuse that actually most of the foundation's money actually goes to help rich awful companies through investment. With 48 of 100 be labeled as "transgressions against social responsibility".

On education, all they provide a racist scholarship which poor white families can't benefit from. They push privatization of education as a reform. They want standardised tests to rate teachers and schools and pay to be based on test scores. Sure that sounds like a good thing until you realise that standardised tests don't work and if a school's reputation and a teacher's pay is based on test scores then tests just get easier. How the hell does that help?

The guy, imo, is still a scumbag. But he's just become smarter at being a scumbag and realises he gets a free pass on whatever he does if starts a big foundation and claims they'll get rid of AIDS and other diseases.

Bill Gates is one of the greatest philanthropists to have ever lived because he ignores people like you.

Instead of investing money in companies which have a low return (and will continue abusing the earth one way or another) he makes the pragmatic decision to put his money into at least capturing the profits of these companies and using their own profits to work against their interests. If you wanted to screw Microsoft you should have bought their stock and invested your returns in funding open source projects. That's a better use of your resources. "Voting with your dollars" doesn't work. They don't need your dollars. However, as a significant stock holder you do get voter rights. Vote with your stock. Get together with like minded share holders and vote in board members who are conducive to your cause. This is like the difference between the tea party and the occupy wall street movement. The Tea party is achieving their goals of dismantling government... by electing themselves government officials. If you want to change a corporation's behavior you don't try to ignore it you become the corporation's leadership and direct its behavior.

And yes he's concentrating his philanthropy in areas that dollar for dollar pay of the most dividends. Instead of wasting money on trendy diseases he's simply seeing how many people can benefit and callously making those choices. This is what Philanthropy *needs*. Do 100 people in the Niger delta lose their charity so that 1,000 people in Darfur get their malaria medication? Yes. Because like an ER trauama ward you need to triage cases based on who has the best chance of using your limited resources most effectively. Sucks to be the person who doesn't get the resources but sucks less overall for all the people you help.

I accidentally posted this anonymously farther down, but in fact Bill Gates has done tremendous harm with his so-called "philanthropy"; his real contribution is "leveraged philanthropy", where you use philanthropic donations to control something so that you make more money. This is true with his vaccine so-called "charity" - which forces poor nations to spend money from other sources on expensive foreign vaccines, rather than on development of local vaccine manufacturing or of general public health infrastructure, and thus actually degrades the quality of 3rd world health care while making Bill Gates his "charitable" money back and then some. This is true of his education so-called "charity" - which forces poor school districts to spend money from other sources on high-tech gadgets and expensive consulting services, which are sold by Bill Gates' various partners, but which are actually worse than no services at all.

The Gates' foundation has announced a partnership with Pearson (for profit-education company) to develop and market materials aligned to the common core. These are the materials that your school district must agree to purchase (this particular test cost $32 million state wide) in order to qualify for Race to the Top.http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-04-19/news/31369375_1_answer-silly-question-pineapple [nydailynews.com]
So, Bill Gates is using a small amount of his "charitable" money to force public money in much larger amounts, to be wasted on this crap.

Add to that, that Jobs did give money to charity, except Jobs didn't advertise it, while gates apparently did it because it was 'expected' for the billionaires club. Bono said he has given tens of millions to charities under the table but refused to have his name attributed to it.

while gates apparently did it because it was 'expected' for the billionaires club

I remeber BG running around in the 80's telling everyone he was going to give most of his fortune away when he turned 50, I was surpised he kept his word. Gates and Buffet actually founded what you call the billionaires club [givingpledge.org], Bono is not a member but I also admire his generosity. This doesn't mean these people are saints (read the list, they're definitely not), but it does indicate they recognise where the money came from and are giving back the best way they know how. For that they should be immortalised (

I remeber BG running around in the 80's telling everyone he was going to give most of his fortune away when he turned 50, I was surpised he kept his word.

If it sounds too good to be true it probably is. Bill Gates did no such thing as give away his fortune, he merely transferred it to a foundation to avoid taxes, and still exercises complete control over it. This is a matter of public record. Gates foundation invests the absolute minimum in actual charitable work that is required to maintain its charitable foundation status, and more often than not in less than worthy forms such as subsidizing the purchase of Microsoft software or subsidizing the purchase of

Bill started giving away large sums well before he retired. He "retired" so that he could focus more of his time on philanthropy.

Bill has given more in real dollars than Rockefeller.

Gates has, or has published plans to give away a larger percentage (read almost everything) of his fortune than Rockefeller did.

I agree he was a ruthless businessman, much like Rockefeller. But compared to other people of great wealth, he leads a relatively modest lifestyle and seems to genuinely care about making sure his fortu

Right. "Force" people to use computers that were a vast improvement over what they had before, or help all kinds of underprivileged people via an array of humanitarian efforts. Yup, definitely a scumbag. He gave us Windows, after all, and might have prevented other multinationals from making more money than they did.

Right. "Force" people to use computers that were a vast improvement over what they had before, or help all kinds of underprivileged people via an array of humanitarian efforts. Yup, definitely a scumbag. He gave us Windows, after all, and might have prevented other multinationals from making more money than they did.

The accusation isn't that Windows failed to improve the status quo. It's that Windows held back the rate of progress in the state of the art. e.g. Pre-emptive multitasking. In pre-emptive multitasking, the OS controls the CPU and decides how long each app gets to use it. The OS pre-empts the app and takes the CPU away from it when its time is up, whether the app is done or not.

The alternative is cooperative multitasking. That's where the OS literally hands over the CPU to each app and asks "please give it back when you're done using it." It relies on the app to cooperate with the OS. If an app didn't give it back in a timely fashion, your system lagged. Worse yet, if the app hung or crashed before giving it back, your system locked up even though the OS and other apps were fine. Windows 3.x, 95 and 98 used cooperative multitasking. Because Microsoft owned the market, people just accepted that that was the way computers were - prone to lagging and crashing.

But pre-emptive multitasking had been around since the 1970s on mainframes, and the 1980s on home systems (CP/M, AmigaOS, and QDOS). Even OS/2 - MIcrosoft's initial joint effort with IBM to replace DOS with a graphical shell - supported pre-emptive multitasking by 1992. So why did Windows users suffer with cooperative multitasking until nearly 2000? Because Microsoft didn't want to share control of the OS market with IBM. They screwed over IBM on OS/2, and developed Windows completely in-house as a replacement instead. They basically used those earlier versions of Windows as a way to keep customers, as they worked on polishing Windows NT (which supported pre-emptive multitasking) as a replacement. The drawback of NT was that it didn't support DOS apps (even though OS/2 did in 1994), so it wasn't until Windows 2000 (which was based on NT) when most of the world had been weaned off of DOS apps that Windows users finally got a taste of pre-emptive multitasking.

Oh I mentioned OS/2. I must be one of those OS/2 nuts and thus my point is invalid, right? Ok, then how about Windows' security model? Muli-user OSes have distinguished between user and root privileges since about when multi-user systems were first invented in the 1960s. But Windows traces its roots back to DOS. Windows 3.x was actually a graphical shell which ran on top of DOS. Same for Win95 and Win98, except they used an integrated version of DOS. DOS has no concept of user privileges - an app can do anything and everything it wants to do with the computer. It wasn't until Windows Vista that Microsoft tried to correct this by forcing apps to run with user privileges by default instead of with admin privileges. The bulk of Windows' security issues and users suffering from virus and botnet infections stem from Microsoft's failure to make a timely transition to the obvious user / root privilege model.

Need another example? Internet Explorer. When the World Wide Web became the next big thing, Microsoft completely missed the boat. Netscape owned the next frontier in computing. Microsoft couldn't stand for that, so they leveraged their OS monopoly to gain browser market share by bundling IE for free (thus forcing Netscape to give away Navigator for free). Once IE eventually won market dominance (over 90%) and the competition had been pretty much vanquished from the market, what did Microsoft do? They rested on the laurels. For nearly 1.5 years, they did not make a single improvement to IE - the only updates were security updates. It wasn't until Firefox started gaining market share that Microsoft decided IE was worth spending developer time on. The state of the art of browser te

Right. "Force" people to use computers that were a vast improvement over what they had before,

Uh what? Microsoft wasn't forcing people to use particular computers, they were forcing people to use particular operating systems, by illegally (in this country and apparently about everywhere in Europe, too) inducing vendors to eschew other operating systems as part of their contracts, with punitive action for those corporations which dared to offer choice to customers.

What you and everyone else who thinks Gates has done more good than evil seems to be forgetting is that that's not Bill Gates' money that went into that foundation, it rightly belongs to too many people to count. What should have happened is that basically all of it (let him keep a few million, whatever) should have been seized and either just outright applied to the federal deficit (that sets an awful precedent but at least it would actually benefit pretty much everyone who had been harmed) or, better but more difficult to do well, spend it on improving oversight of corporations to ensure that the same kind of thing isn't happening in the present, and doesn't happen in the future.

Instead, Bill Gates is still in control of the money behind the foundation. He ultimately decides how and where that money is invested, and where it is spent. How and where he decides to invest and spend it, of course, is in ways that benefit him personally, as he is (again, again, and again) personally, massively invested in big pharma.

What a shortsighted nerd view.

Right back atcha, me laddo. Billy boy is snerking at you all the way to the bank. He's snerking at me too, for my impotence; I certainly can't stop him, I can't even convince a quorum of bored nerds who have had to suffer with Microsoft's criminal activities for years that Bill Gates is not an angel.

Are you honestly comparing hunger and disease that he's now giving money to cure to you having to use one type of computer? Are you for real? Maybe you should take this to r/firstworldproblems. "Dear FWP, I was forced to use one type of operating system to make my life just a tad easier." Tell that to someone whose main task is to find some drinking water for today.

He didn't give us Windows, he forced windows on us by having an exclusive contract with the PC vendors.

I hate MS and Bill Gates almost as much as Linux zealots... but this is just a retarded statement.

No one was FORCED to buy Windows, everyone DID buy Windows because it fit there needs better than alternatives.

If people didn't want Windows, he wouldn't have been able to get exclusive distribution rights with PC makers.

I suspect that if he's going to admit it (which no one should hold their breath waiting) he'll do it on his death bed so he can't be chewed out for the damage he's wreaked on the computing sector.

Seriously? You've got a warped view of the world if your reason for doing things is because of what others think of you.

If Bill Gates is concerned with with how he's acted in this world, he's concerned RIGHT NOW. He's already aware of his evils, FAR more than we are.

People don't make death bed confessions because they were afraid of what was going to happen to them in life. People make death bed confessions because they are afraid of what comes in the after life and they're hoping for forgiveness before its too late to be forgiven.

And yes, DOS was better than CP/M, you know why? Because the shit I wanted to use ran on it. If you think the 'technically superior' product is the one that wins the market, you've never had your eyes open. Technically superior products ALWAYS fail as people don't want technically superior, they want fucking useful, which is almost always different. Go see how HURD and Plan 9 are doing.

..But you still bought a copy of windows and made Bill Gates money. He didn't give a shit if you used it. He gave a shit that you bought a copy and filled his coffers. The point, more succinctly, is Bill Gates made it impossible NOT to buy Windows when you bought a computer. You had to build your own to avoid giving Bill cash.

More and more I'm seeing users here toss around allegations of "astroturfing" or "shilling" any time anybody says something that isn't completely negative about Microsoft, or Apple, or Google, or Oracle, or Facebook, or Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs, or basically any other prominent company or individual.

Worst of all, this is done without providing any sort of evidence that astroturfing actually is taking place. The age of an account and the number of comments posted using it in the past are not evidence, by the way.

Martin Espinoza, please present some real evidence to show that this is indeed a case of astroturfing. At the very least, you'll need to prove that the "DemomanDeveloper" was in contact with a representative or representatives of Microsoft and/or Bill Gates, that an agreement was put in place for "DemomanDeveloper" to fake support for Gates, that consideration (financial or otherwise) was involved, and that Slashdot comment 40273599 was intentionally posted to fulfill the obligations of this agreement. I await your evidence.

Save the accusations of "astroturfing" and "shilling" for when such incidents can provably be shown to have happened. Otherwise, learn to accept that some people may have opinions that differ from yours, and that just because they support Microsoft, or Google, or Facebook, or Apple, or whoever, it does not mean that they are "astroturfing".

It really degrades the conversation here, Martin Espinoza, when people like you are tossing around "astroturfing" accusations and allegations day-in and day-out, with no evidence or proof of any kind. I'd expect that over at Digg or reddit, but not here.

Gladwell is way off base. We remember the business giants of bygone eras for being business giants, not their charitable work. Rockefeller is known for oil more than anything else. Likewise with J. P. Morgan and banking, Carnegie and steel, Vanderbilt and railroads, etc. None of these guys have a savory reputation. They were all known for being ruthless businessmen ready to engage in any profitable behavior no matter how unethical, if they had good odds of getting away with it or getting off lightly if caught.

Today, there isn't a one among our best business leaders who doesn't have more and worse baggage than the average politician. Nor has there ever been. The very "best" business leaders ever (as crudely measured by wealth) look pathetic next to the best statesmen, scientists, journalists, explorers, military leaders, sports stars, artists, and performers. Top business leaders are almost more infamous than famous. Always seem to leave behind them a long trail of victims of dirty competition, callousness, theft, treachery, betrayal, bribery, graft, and corruption. Many even think that sort of thing might be necessary to succeed big in business, so bad is its reputation. One of the earliest business leaders recorded in history, Crassus, the wealthiest Roman ever, was of the same stripe. Greedy, unprincipled, arrogant, and crass. The very word "crass" comes from his name.

For the most part, their charitable work looks like feeble attempts to make up for the damage they did to accomplish their rise, to buy love and popularity just like they buy everything else. And it's never above suspicion, as charitable contributions have been used and abused to dodge taxes.

Yes, very good. His posting history indeed begins after this thread was created, and 75% of the comments are in this thread. Of those comments, the community has decided that 66% of them are trolling. The remainder consists of a brief parody of slashdot groupthink which has been moderated "funny" once. This is not a high-quality account.

DemomanDeveloper seems to be pro Microsoft and anti Google

Uh what? And no. He's pro bill gates, and anti-G+, or my representation thereof. Your powers of deduction, or shall I say implication are for shit.

So you've proven he has a bias and maybe at best you've proven he's a troll. Still need to prove he's astroturfing. You are aware astroturfing does not mean holds a particular bias, correct?

"what were they thinking when they dared to include an 'embrace and extend,' proprietary network platform in their OS so that people might actually be locked into their ecosystem (despite the pre-existence of browsers based on open standards). "

You mean NSAPI? Both are nothing more than equally powerful plugin systems. You know whats better, ActiveX pretty much what Mozilla does with XPCOM now.

Remind me again what the actual flaws are in ActiveX so I can tear you a new asshole pointing out how you really have no clue.

ActiveX is no different and no less secure than any other plugin system, its simply a globally available plugin system. ALL really OSes have them, sorry your missing out. IE's had bugs and a bad implementation that made ActiveX easy to use to exploit, but that has absolutely nothing with ActiveX itself.

When you guys make idiotic statements about ActiveX you just make it entirely clue you're just an ignorant fanboy and anyone with a clue stops listening to you.

Its almost as dumb as pretending that anyone followed any 'standard' back then. Standards didnt' matter until Microsoft wiped Netscape off the face of the Earth, and they needed something to use as a battlecry for their recovery.

Remind me again what the actual flaws are in ActiveX so I can tear you a new asshole pointing out how you really have no clue.

Now that is hilarious, and the fact that you don't know what the flaw is makes you even more idiotic. It runs - when it does - on a proprietary OS made by a company founded and lead by a law-breaking scumbag who is now using his ill-gotten gains to re-write history, after saddling the world with a broken infrastructure of virus ridden garbage by using anti-compete contract conditions and pure FUD for decades.

Reference please. Foundations are legally bound to contribute to non profits only. If you're talking about where you invest the money in holding, then DUH, you invest in what is making money. Check every other foundation you admire except the Jobs Foundation, since there isn't one and the selfish guy thought he could take it to the grave and make his life better.

The burden of evidence is on the person making a claim, not on the reader of said claim.

Telling people to search for the evidence of your claims on their own is a strong indication that your claim is weakly-supported (even if it is not, like this instance). Otherwise, why would you not provide them up-front?

Really? So you invest in what's making money, for example, like a dirty coal power plant on the outskirts of a poor village, then use 1/10th the profit from that plant to combat asthma in that village?

I don't think it's likely related to money in this case. Full disclosure...I'm not quite a fanboy but I do own several apple products, haven't bought a PC in probably 5 years or more, and prefer OSX or Linux to Windows.

I think he's saying we remember folks who make large humanitarian or health contributions to society for longer because it's more relevant to more people for longer than products we consume. We remember some industrialists because they so far outshone their contemporaries and had an effe

How sad and cynical do you have to be to seriously believe that all the time and money Gates has spent, especially post-Microsoft, is some sort of elaborate ploy to make people think better of him? I'm sure he's under no illusion that he can convince certain elements of the Slashdot community, but really, that's far more a reflection on those people than it is him.

Your comment has truly depressed me. Doubly so that it got modded anything other than flamebait.

I suspect Gates does do what he does in part because he wants to be liked. Humans have a lot of trouble not having that as a motivation. However, I agree strongly with your analysis. The real evidence that Gates is trying to really be helpful and that's his primary goal is what he has targeted. He isn't doing flashy stuff in the developed world, but rather looked and said "how can I save the most lives the most efficiently?" and then went and did this. This is what charity should be, not feel good measures but giving money where it is really needed.

The real evidence that Gates is trying to really be helpful and that's his primary goal is what he has targeted. He isn't doing flashy stuff in the developed world, but rather looked and said "how can I save the most lives the most efficiently?" and then went and did this.

How sad and cynical do you have to be to seriously believe that all the time and money Gates has spent, especially post-Microsoft, is some sort of elaborate ploy to make people think better of him? I'm sure he's under no illusion that he can convince certain elements of the Slashdot community, but really, that's far more a reflection on those people than it is him.

Your comment has truly depressed me. Doubly so that it got modded anything other than flamebait.

I hope your joking please don't kill yourself , it is only Bill Gates after all....

Bill Gates is just following the pattern of all powerful people who discover they are hated and founding a charity to present them in a better light.

Gates's talking about it got Buffet to donate more than a billion dollars. There's little doubt that he has gotten others to contribute significant money, too. Jobs was well equipped to do the same, had he chosen to do so. I'm not going to knock Jobs for however he conducted his philanthropy. There are trade-offs involved in everything, and Jobs made his for reasons that presumably made sense to him. Good for him. And good for Gates for deciding to apply not just his money but his prestige to the causes he cares about.

And let's ignore that there are at least some beneficent motives for being public about charitable giving, and assume for a minute Gates is just in it for the attention. So the hell what? It means that society has found a way to channel base motivations to do impressive good. That's a good thing. I prefer a world where attention whores give billions to disease prevention and education to a world in which they do something useless or actively harmful to get attention.

Except that all that money still primarily ends up in the hands of corporations through investment and they more or less only give enough away to avoid taxes. How is that really any different than running a investment firm? But then on top of it he's effectively creating a charity monopoly that has a knock-on effect of hurting a lot of other charities that do good things. And a lot of those companies they invest in are harming poor countries.

Here's a good more balanced look at his foundation. http://www [latimes.com]

So all his money goes to his friend or his family. If they're so concerned about helping us plebes why can't they just give that money to existing charities and foundations rather than to friends and family? It's a scam, imo.

Do you understand how these foundations work? They act as intermediaries instead of Gates, or Buffet having to look at and approve each and every charity, the foundation handles the grunt work. And as long as they like where the money is going, it means neither of them really have to do much to distribute their donations.

The Person -> The Foundation -> The Charities

I know its a hard concept for some people to understand, if it involves more then one thing you end up losing half of the people in th

I knew someone who made a huge killing in some business early in his twenties or something, to the point where he was set for life. He decided to create a "charitable foundation" to do all his investments. He'd funnel money every which way into it and out of it, in the process funding his family's lifestyle and minimizing taxes. I'm not an accountant so I couldn't tell you what the shit he was doing meant, but I can't see how it could possibly not be a scam.

The guy (Steve Jobs) parked in handicapped spots [edibleapple.com], and even went so far as to only keep his cars long enough to skirt under the registration requirement so he couldn't be ticketed for it.

I know there are a lot of Apple haters out there, but everything I've ever read about Steve Jobs as a person is totally negative and points to him being an asshole of epic proportions. This makes it hard for me to believe he was a philanthropist in secret.

“He’s gotten a lot of criticism for not giving away tons of money, but I think it’s a bum rap. There’s only so many hours in a week, and he created so many incredible products. He really contributed to culture and society.”

Only in today's twisted world can creating Chinese-made, throw-away consumer goods sold for premium prices be considered "giving back to the world". It fits well with this whole mythology we're building up around the wealthy these days, how it's just such a burden being rich and all that...

No, you're an idiot. Read the fucking article: according to it, he's been doing it for DECADES, and not just at his own company. He hasn't been "dyeing" [sic] of cancer all that time. If he was doing it for his cancer (which was relatively recent), he certainly could have gotten an official handicap tag.

“We could tell that Steve was in, because his blue Mercedes was parked in the handicap zone in front. As I was to learn, Steve always parked there."

The quote then goes on to talk about Steve doing it because disgruntled Apple employees (Disgruntled Apple employees?! How is this possible?!!??!?!!?) would key his car when he parked it in back. Obviously the reasonable solution, if your Steve Jobs, is not to put security cameras up or anything realistic...no, the solution is to just park in a handicapped spot because fuck all those crippled people, I'm Steve Jobs and the rules don't apply to me, and besides, the sanctity of my Mercedes is more important than their legal right to a parking spot near the front doors.

Yeah, that's really what makes the whole situation even more asinine, the fact that he could easily afford to have someone be on call 24/7 to drive him wherever he wanted to go...and like you said, even a 24/7 valet service to meet him anywhere and handle the parking aspect for him, if he insisted on driving himself around.

For all his brilliance, he couldn't come up with a way to handle this situation without being a dickhead and parking in a handicapped spot? I wonder what Steve's response would have been

Come on, it may be a dick move, but I bet he never came close to preventing a handicapped person from parking.

How the hell would you know? How could he know? Unless he was visually monitoring the spot, there could have been plenty of handicapped people that were forced to drive by and park farther away all because he was Steve fucking Jobs and the rules don't apply to him.

Would you make the same excuses if Joe Blow did it in front of your local 7-11? Why does Steve Jobs get a pass?

You tell me: Would you park in a handicapped spot if you were not handicapped? Even if there were "several spaces"?

Everyone knows it's wrong. There's no moral ambiguity here. Even Steve knew it was wrong, he just didn't give a shit. Parking in a handicapped spot when you're not handicapped is pretty high up there on the 'asshole-who-thinks-the-rules-don't-apply-to-him' meter. It rates even higher when you realize that he was Steve fucking Jobs and had myriad alternatives available to him that didn't i

If, however, you're writing this from a personal computer, smartphone, tablet, or anything with a GUI, then you must be a huge hypocrite, since you owe it to Steve Jobs for bringing those tools to the masses.

William Shockley brought us the transistor in 1947.
Texas Instruments created the first silicon transistor in 1954.
The first computer meant to be small enough you could put it beside ones desk and have only one person operate it, was built by IBM in 1954, called the IBM 610.
A group known as the "traitorous Eight", of engineers and scientists left Shockley's company in 1957 to form Fairchild Semiconductor making some of the first commercially viable transistors.
Two from Bell Labs in 1960 created the first MOS transistor which would be the basis of digital electronics for many years.
Two of the "traitorous Eight" who formed Fairchild went on to create Intel in 1968.
Alan Kay, one of the people who designed the Xerox Alto, first proposed a "tablet" computer in 1968. Creating the concept that many would attempt over the years.
Intel created their first SRAM memory in 1969, created the first processor (the Intel 4004) in 1971.
Xerox Alto's created in 1973 was the first "desktop" computer to include a GUI and mouse, something both Jobs and Gates stole from to design their own OS's. Alan Kay by the way designed the GUI window system we still use today for this PC.
The first "portable" computer was the IBM 5100 series, which could be carried around in one piece. Introduced in 1975.
Intel created the Intel 8086 in 1978, which till this day its derivatives still dominates the computer processor market. Including the newest Mac Hardware.
The IBM PC was released in 1981. After that, the rest is history, both the Intel x86 architecture, and the MS DOS became the dominate way to build computers, eating up the rest of the competition till there was virtually nothing left.

Fast forward a few years...

Compaq released the first convertible slate/tablet PC back in 2003, as the TC1000. Where you could dock the touch screen monitor to a fully functional keyboard/laptop base and use it both as tablet and as a PC.
Fujitsu ST5011D's came out in 2004 as a fully functional Windows Slate Machine.
Motion LS800 was introduced as a fully functional Windows Slate machine in 2005.

There are about a dozen more models that came out between then and now, but personally my first fully tablet PC, not a convertible or a docking model was the Archos 9, a fully functioning Windows 7 PC, first up for sale in October 2009 when I bought mine. Apple's initial iPad wasn't even for sale till April of 2010. A whole half year after I bought my first.

So again other then the headaches of dealing with tech support issues on Mac's, how do I owe Apple anything?

It's not that clear cut. He didn't believe in just throwing money at a problem to look good. He did however have the Steven P. Jobs Foundation briefly in the 80's (before foundations became the popular con amongst billionaires), he and Apple did work with Bono's Red and many people assume it was him that gave $150 million to Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center but it was done anonymously so who knows? Quite frankly whoever that anonymous person is I think that's much more admirable to give away $150 million than start a foundation that largely invests its money in pharmaceutical companies that refuse to lower prices for poor countries or invests in oil companies causing bronchitis, asthma and vision problems for many in Africa due to all the pollution they cause burning off oil and other stuff.

Thing is : you have no clue what philanthropic work has been done by Jobs.

True, but it's irrelevant: I think that the premise of the original article is flawed - people are not remembered for the philanthropy. Look at Edison and Tesla. I've no clue whether either of them were philanthropists but they get remembered because we still use the gadgets they invented. If 100 years from now we are still using desktops and tablets in some form we'll remember the pioneers who originally "invented" them (yes I know Gates/Jobs did not invent the original gadgets but Edison did not invent,

95% of their money goes into investment and the rest is effectively given away to avoid tax. How is that any different from any other corporation other than it obvious makes people think better of them compared to G.E. for example? And on top of it the bulk is going into some pretty awful companies causing all sorts of problems for poor nations.

Also why do Gates and Buffet largely give away their money to family fo

The world's richest man decided that he wanted to make more money. In order to do so he decided not to invest in stocks or venture capital. Instead he gave away a large proportion of his money to a foundation that is required by law to give away over $1.5bn each year to public charities. The foundation can then use this as a cover to invest in lucrative enterprises like eradicating polio and curing guinea worm disease.

You are alleging that a seemingly philanthropic endeavour is actually some sort of cynical scheme to make money from the problems of the developing world. That's a pretty serious allegation. If you don't have any evidence an honourable person would take it back.

May be wrong on the history here, but the robber barons didn't generally give all their money away when they died. They gave it to their kids. Gates has said he's not going to do that; we'll see if he follows through.

I think you are misreading history. However, even if you are right, it doesn't mean that Gates' efforts to rebrand himself won't work. Alfred Nobel developed dynamite, and made his millions selling explosives. He decided to change his image after he saw a mistakenly printed obituary calling him a merchant of death. He spent his money creating the Nobel prizes. Today the overwhelming majority of people associate the name Nobel with the prizes he created, and in particular the peace prize.

In other words, even if Gates is the demon you seem to think he is, it doesn't mean that a bit of well placed money won't whitewash his image.

No I was thinking how I read somewhere that polio got trapped in North Africa and that the "final push" would get rid of it but then their anti-vaxers showed up and it got out. (Although I'm not even sure if that's even true because I've since read that the whole time it was still endemic to the Indian subcontinent so even if they eradicated it in North Africa there was at least one more reserve.)